Ho Chi Minh City, a.k.a Saigon, is the old capital of Vietnam and seems like the big brother of the current capital, Hanoi. From a tourist's perspective the city seems larger, more open and more developed than the Hanoi. There are probably more motorbikes here than in the capital but the better infrastructure makes walking around a bit easier. Crossing roads is still as difficult but by this stage of the game we were comfortable enough to pull off the confident walk across the road through passing traffic - it's an illogical approach but, again, trust in the system gets you across safely.

Ho Chi Minh is most famous for its war history and the invasion of the USA into 'nam. The two main places to get an idea of how terrible the war was and the impact it had, and continues to have, on Vietnam is at the Vietnam War Remnants Museum and the Cu Chi tunnels.

The museum is one of the very few museums that we've been to and, although it is quite a lot of information to take in and not really done in a way that interacts with the viewer, its content is impacting and even, at times, difficult to look at. Some say that some of the content is a bit extreme or reaches the point of anti-American propaganda. We think it might have hit that point once or twice but we guess this is their story that they're telling.

The tunnels take the complete opposite approach to the museum and they are interactive. We took a US$5 group tour from the travel agent across the road from our hotel which included our transport and a brilliant guide to the tunnels. US$4 more to get into the tunnel grounds and we were on our way. The tunnels are a massive network of layered underground tunnels. On the tour, you'll probably only spend about 3 minutes underground in a tunnel that was rebuilt for tourist consumption but the design of this tour is to give you an idea of how the Vietnamese tackled the war and includes more than just the tunnels. The tourist tunnel was built almost twice the size (in width and height) of the actual tunnels to accommodate the western visitors who are naturally bigger than the Vietnamese but gives an accurate taste of what the guerillas went through and how they literally survived in the jungle and underground. You can opt to visit the actual tunnels but they're about 3 to 12 metres below the surface, dark, extremely hot, extremely humid and not even a metre high. We tried the tourist tunnel which is a couple of metres deep, 120m long with exits every 20m and well lit and we couldn't even make it further than the first exit before making our escape…

Cleverly, the tunnels also have a shooting range on site. Clever for two reasons: first, it gives an authentic sound to the site and, secondly, it's a popular tourist attraction and bangs in the money. And why is it so popular? Cause you can go there to shoot an AK47 or get your Rambo on and try your hand at one of those massive machine guns that Sly put on every young boys Christmas wish list. At US$1 to US$2 per bullet, you can easily see how the dollars roll in on this huge draw card. According to our guide, the record for most rounds bought and fired was US$900 by a trio of Australian navy officers, all done in under an hour; ka-ching.

On our way back from the tunnels to the city our guide told us some really interesting things about life in 'nam. Some of the things that stood out for us was that Vietnamese don't believe in using banks (they opt for buying gold) or insurance because they believe that neither is reliable enough to actually deliver money when called. Guess that takes Vietnam off our list of places we could live. Other funnier ones were that all of us mlungus, yes all of us, look the same to the locals or that local women try desperately to keep their skin pale by completely covering up during the day to the point of wearing face masks and extra large peaked hats, all just to look more like their favourite Korean soap stars.

With all this history and disaster you wouldn't think that there wasn't much else on offer in the city but the city has rebuilt, redeveloped and rebranded (guessing part of the reason for the name change from Saigon) to take its place as one of the main cities of South East Asia. It's a pretty cool city that also offers good value for money on food, accommodation, entertainment and shopping. There are cheaper-than-Thailand markets for shopping at Ben Thanh Market and Saigon Centre and there are plenty of good night spots - we were lucky that the road that we stayed on, De Tham Street, was a great hub for nightlife in a tourist and expat part of town.

So, the city offers tons of history but also lots of promise for the future and development of Vietnam. The country is becoming a major tourist attraction and with these larger cities coupled with the coastal stops of Da Nang and Nha Thang, which we unfortunately never got to, the country offers the full package. They even offer a brilliant open ticketed bus system that you can hop on and off of at all of the main hotspots all the way down the country. If only we had time to check it all out…

Trek on…Brett and Darren

P.S. Keep up to speed with where we've been staying and how we've been getting around in our blog posts from Johannesburg